26 Mar One Minute

That’s how fast a life can change. One moment all is calm, the next chaotic. The current show at Roundabout Theatre’s black box space explores this notion in a riveting and quietly suspenseful one woman show performed by Marin Ireland in a portrayal that is literally up close and personal.

Martin Zimmerman’s On The Exhale is a tautly written epistle revealing the before and after circumstances of a shocking incident involving gun violence. At once acutely particular and deeply emotional, the piece draws you in on an intimate level while also simultaneously providing the distance of an intelligent interview, allowing the audience to be both in the play and outside of it, permitting rumination on the events as they unfold in the woman’s story.

As the woman, Marin Ireland has expertly crafted a character on the edge with both humor and pathos. She gives an assured, controlled performance and her ability to change the play’s mood from moment to moment is remarkable. She really knows how to hold an audience rapt; you simply listen to every word she utters.

The complexities of gun ownership and usage are explored in the piece and there are no easy answers but there are difficult and heart breaking repercussions.

And it is these repercussions which propel the story to its hold-your-breath conclusion which I won’t reveal here.

See Marin Ireland in On The Exhale through April 2.